Posted this to my personal book blog yesterday, reposting here in hopes of getting more book recs and suggestions for kick-ass scifi and fantasy books that don't feature the lead, secondary or periphery female characters getting raped (with, preferably, other similar problematic scenarios properly addressed/absent and a gender balance achieved). Your help is appreciated!

---------------

I was having a discussion on twitter with some book reading peeps, and I was intrigued by a scifi book so many were discussing at that time. It felt imminent that I’d be buying and reading it, too. The premise sounded interesting, as did the sample for Kindle on Amazon. Somewhere, though, and I think it was a review on Goodreads, I read that it was quite violent. This made my spidey senses tingle just a tad, but enough. So I asked my fellow Twitter book peeps – is there rape? I didn’t find out in regards to the book on discussion, but was assured that the author uses “all the rape” in some of her other books.

And down went my perky reader flag.

Authors can have all the rape they want in their books, but apparently I’d still prefer to avoid it after reading one too many in a row in the last couple of years that turned me so far off the device, I might never find my way back to whatever path they were on. Instead, I think I’ll just try to keep to the path marked Sans All the Rape. It can still be a perilous road, but it doesn’t auto flip the rape switch.

In fact, if anyone out there has some recs for good science fiction and/or science fiction romance or fantasy and/or fantasy romance reads that are Sans All the Rape, that would be great. I’m talking about books populated with female characters that count. Female characters that are more than just a vagina or a girlfriend or an obvious peripheral stand-in to prop up the dudes around her so they might appear mightier and more awesome than the sun (I like dudes that are mightier than the sun just fine, but prefer equal treatment and consideration be given to the female characters around them).

I’ve read books that don’t do this, and it only makes me want more. They tend not to have all the rape. Because women aren’t just characters waiting for rape. No, it’s true. They have other parts besides a vagina (which, by the way, is such a nice part, when, you know, it’s actually appreciated as the female-owned part that it is), and those parts get showcased quite awesomely sometimes. Things like her valor, her integrity, her gosh-damned mistakes that she learns from and improves from, her kick-ass skillz with that futuristic fully automatic laser/grenade-launching/torch-firing/bullet-pounding shoulder canon (it’s quite big)…I think you get the idea. Something with a little balance fuh gosh sakes. Let’s make a list!

So if anyone has any recs, again, that would be great. And thank you. I’ll edit the post to reflect your suggestions.